MacOS – Time Machine doesn’t backup folders with same name as user

backupmacostime-machine

Let's say my OS X user's folder is called Attila and I have a folder with the same name in a folder, e.g. ~/Xcode/Attila/. Now, if I do a Time Machine backup, the ~/Xcode/Attila/ folder won't be copied.

Why is it? Is there a workaround to fix this?

(OS X version: 10.8.3)

EDIT

tmutil removeexclusion doesn't seem to work in this case:

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EDIT 2

Might not be relevant, but my user account was migrated from a Time Machine backup.

Best Answer

I am assuming you have already checked in in System Preferences > Time Machine > Options to ensure those folders have not been excluded?

We can then use the tmutil utility to find out some more information about this.

From Terminal enter this command:

tmutil isexcluded ~/Xcode/Attila

This will tell you whether it has been excluded from Time Machine backup or not. If it lists

[Excluded]    /Users/Attila/Xcode/Attila

You can then remove it from the exclusions list by running 

sudo tmutil removeexclusion -p ~/Xcode/Attila

For more information on tmutil, check out its documentation

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